According to collectives that assert the rights of sex workers, sex work is the provision of a sexual service in exchange for money. In this understanding, all parties involved do this as a personal decision and with consent.
Sex workers who voluntarily identify as such are mainly women of legal age, who have decided to work in this area for various reasons and motivations to financially provide for their families or themselves. Sex workers have not been victims of trafficking nor do they need to be ‘rescued’. Instead, they assert their right to freely and safely exercise their job without external interventions, and with the full recognition of their human rights, including their labour rights.
Proponents of legalization advocate for legalizing sex work and recognizing it as an occupation like any other. They contend that ‘their position is not liberal, but union-based and class-conscious. They consider that [sex work] is a job exercised based on the person’s own decision, in an autonomous and voluntary manner. This decision is due to the lack of opportunities and precariousness of job opportunities for women, most of whom are mothers and heads of households’.
Organizations led by sex workers have gone to great lengths to include a debate that distances itself from a double standard and demagogy in the public agenda. They have sought to shed light on the real issues that sex workers encounter and demand that they be included in the centre of the debate. They reject their victimization and assert their protagonism, dignity, autonomy, agency, and capacity for social negotiation.
Various UN agencies defend this position, including the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the International Labour Organizaton (ILO), the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS), and UN Women , although with an unclear stance. Also, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), the Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM) of the Organization for American States (OAS), and private entities such as Open Society Foundations, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch, among others.
On the other hand, for some sectors of feminism and movements that defend women’s rights, sex work or prostitution is understood as a precarious survival activity that perpetuates gender stereotypes and reduces women and girls to commodities to be sold, bought, or rented. For these groups, it is the cruellest expression of patriarchy and a clear form of violence against women and children. They also argue that talking about sex work conceals the trafficking of women and girls for exploitation in prostitution, as well as other forms of sexual exploitation.
The debate around abolishing, legalizing, or decriminalizing sex work or prostitution is one of the mayor debates within the feminist movement globally.
Photo credit: Yurii Zymovin